People who come to Burnaby Hospital in the middle of a mental health or substance use crisis no longer have to face a busy emergency room filled with bright lights, beeping machinery, bustling staff and moaning patients.
The hospital’s new emergency mental health and substance use zone opened its doors this morning.
It’s a dedicated area designed to be calm, therapeutic, comfortable and private for mental health and substance use patients.
Staffed with 12 new full-time positions, including specially trained emergency and mental health and substance use staff, the space has a separate entrance from the busy main ER and features a seclusion room, three confidential assessment rooms, a “nourishment centre” with food and a shower room.
Most of the area is painted lavender.
Burnaby resident Axel Sauve likes the colour.
“It’s calming,” he says.
A third-year SFU psychology student with bipolar disorder who has visited the regular ER over the last three years, Sauve also likes the low-key atmosphere, the specialized care and the three assessment rooms.
The regular ER has only one such room.
“That means you’ve got to wait around as a patient to get service. I could have a psychiatrist, who’s ready to see me but he can’t see me because he doesn’t have the space for it,” Sauve said. “You need your privacy respected. That goes to your dignity as well.”
Sauve said the changes will make a “huge difference.”
ER manager Pat Smid sure hopes so.
“I really want to see excellent patient care delivered and the patients to really feel like they’ve been treated with dignity and respect and have gotten all the supports that they need to move forward,” she told the NOW.
The new zone was carved out of existing space and cost more than $3.7 million to build.
The Burnaby Hospital Foundation pitched in $1.7 million and the Burnaby Firefighters Charitable Society donated $250,000.
Health Minister Adrian Dix, who toured the facility on Tuesday, also pointed out that the province is adding significant operational funding to the project in the form of 12 new full-time equivalent positions.
The NDP government announced in September it was going to spend $1.3 billion on a redevelopment of Burnaby Hospital by 2027, but Dix said the new mental health zone couldn’t wait till then.
“These issues in emergency rooms, these issues for mental health and addictions, they’re affecting people now,” he told the NOW. “We can’t wait to deal with all the problems until the new hospital is built. We have to address some of them now.”
The new zone is expected to support 4,300 patients annually.
It’s the fourth project of its kind in Fraser Health – Abbotsford Regional, Royal Columbian and Surrey Memorial hospitals all have similar dedicated areas offering specialized care.
Funding for a mental health zone at the hospital was first announced by the Liberal government a month before the last provincial election in 2017 as part of a $13.8-million “interim sustainment plan” to keep the aging health facility – parts of which were built in the 1950s – going until its redevelopment at an unspecified future date.
